Special Education Teachers Win Suit on Union Activity

By WINNIE HU

Published: May 19, 2001

WHITE PLAINS, May 18—
A federal jury has awarded nearly $3.8 million to seven teachers and aides who worked for a special education district in Greenburgh after finding that administrators had violated their constitutional rights in 1995 by disciplining them for union activities.

The teachers and aides were dismissed or reassigned to non-teaching jobs more than a year after they met with other union members outside the office of Sandra G. Mallah, the superintendent of the district, Greenburgh 11. The district serves about 370 emotionally disturbed and special education students. The youngsters, most of them from New York City, attend school at Children's Village, a residential center in Dobbs Ferry.

After a two-week trial in Federal District Court here, the eight-member jury decided Wednesday night to award the money to the teachers as compensation for their emotional distress, and in the case of two teachers, for the physical injuries that resulted from their punitive assignments. The teachers' union, the Greenburgh 11 Federation of Teachers, was also awarded $183,000 in damages, or $1,000 for every union member.

''I feel vindicated that my story got out, and I had a chance finally to tell the truth of what happened to me,'' said Milton Cobb, 50, who developed carpal tunnel syndrome after being relegated to writing lesson plans in a library in Bronxville. ''It's very frustrating. I've been in there for five-and-a-half years.''

Phone calls this afternoon to Ms. Mallah and Jack Feldman, a lawyer in Garden City, N.Y., who represented the school district, were not returned.

The jury award comes after years of acrimony between union leaders and the school administration that stemmed, in part, from negotiations over a teachers' contract that expired in 1993. (It was finally settled in 1999 with a 20 percent raise for the teachers.) In 1994, a group of teachers and aides picketed in front of their students' award dinner in defiance of a judge's order. Afterward, the Greenburgh 11 Board of Education suspended the eight teachers involved and fired the two aides.

A few months later, on the last day of the school year, a larger group of teachers and aides gathered in a hallway outside Ms. Mallah's office. Calling them potentially violent, the board fired or suspended more teachers and aides. But the union later sued the school district and filed a complaint with the State Public Employment Relations Board, charging that union leaders had been singled out for punishment.

School administrators later disciplined seven more teachers and aides in the hallway incident. Those teachers and aides, in turn, filed a separate lawsuit against the Greenburgh district in September 1998, saying that their First Amendment rights had been violated. They also claimed unequal treatment because the school district had not disciplined other teachers who were also standing in the hallway but said they did not support the union.

''What the jury saw here was a lot of real animosity toward the union,'' said Conrad W. Lower, the lawyer who represented the teachers and the union. ''And they weren't willing to accept their nice, little excuses.''

Mr. Lower said he would file a motion in federal court to reinstate four of the teachers to positions in classrooms. A fifth teacher has since retired, and two teaching aides were rehired in 1999 by the school district (one has left for another job). Mr. Lower said the lawsuit against the school district by the other disciplined teachers was still pending.

News of this week's jury verdict has already been cheered by the teachers' supporters in Greenburgh.

''I'm really very pleased,'' said Paul J. Feiner, the town supervisor of Greenburgh, who wrote letters of support to education officials. ''To put teachers in libraries at taxpayer expense to do nothing has been a scandal.''